£125 million frozen from one scam empire in the UK
Key Points
- UK sanctions on the Prince Group have frozen more than £125 million in British assets
- Assets include a £12 million North London mansion and a £100 million City office building
- Home Office minister David Hanson is in Cambodia signing a new anti-scam agreement
- The US filed to seize around 127,000 bitcoin from chairman Chen Zhi in the same action
- The deal covers intelligence sharing, financial investigations and trafficking victim protection
UK sanctions against the Prince Group and its chairman Chen Zhi have frozen more than £125 million in British assets, including a £12 million mansion in North London and a £100 million office building in the City of London.
The figures come from the British Embassy in Phnom Penh, which published them on Tuesday (22 September) as Home Office minister David Hanson arrived in Cambodia for the International Conference on Combating Online Scams.
The UK and US jointly sanctioned the Prince Group, Chen Zhi and the related entities Jin Bei Group, Golden Fortune Resorts World and Byex Exchange on 14 October 2025 for running scam centres across Southeast Asia.
The compounds behind those sanctions use trafficked workers to run online fraud against victims around the world, including in the UK, with romance and fake investment schemes among the most common.
The US moved against the same network on the same day, with the Department of Justice filing to seize around 127,000 bitcoin linked to Chen Zhi, worth roughly £11 billion at the time.
Hanson is in Cambodia from 22 to 24 September and will sign a new Memorandum of Understanding with the Cambodian government covering intelligence sharing, financial and digital investigations, and protections for trafficking victims linked to scam operations.
“Fraud is a truly global threat, which leaves a devastating human impact in its wake – from the defrauded victims who lose everything they’ve spent a lifetime building to the trafficked victims who lose their freedom and are mistreated, tortured and even killed,” said David Hanson, Minister of State for the Home Office.
“This agreement is about building something practical and lasting: sharing intelligence, tracing dirty money, and above all protecting the people, on every side, who are harmed by this crime,” he added.
The embassy said Cambodia has passed new legislation, sustained enforcement action and set up a dedicated commission to lead its response to scam operations inside its borders.
The visit forms part of a wider UK push to build fraud-fighting partnerships across the Indo-Pacific, including the INTERPOL Global Fraud Taskforce, known as Operation Shadow Storm, which targets large-scale scam compounds in Southeast Asia.
Hanson will also meet UN agencies and independent journalists during the trip, whose reporting the embassy said helped build the evidence base for international action against scam centres.
